For pretty much the entire duration of Bush Junior’s presidency, the running joke had to do with who in their right mind would let him anywhere near the launch codes for the US’s nuclear missiles. That was a favourite dig from pretty much anyone who didn’t much care for bush just based on the fact he was a republican, even before he started pulling completely brainless stunts that actually gave people reason to have a major problem and a half with him. As it turns out, that’s kind of the least of the US’s security worries. What people should have been getting twitchy about after all were the guys what were supposed to be actually paying attention to all things nuclear. Maybe if they’d done something a little closer to that, the facilities what house the things would be just slightly more resistent to 82-year-old nuns and their handyman friends. And if you thought that’d send any government official worth his salt out shopping for a new contractor, boy are you in the wrong universe. What they do, instead? Well… uh…
A Department of Energy report (PDF) on the incident found ‘troubling displays of ineptitude in responding to alarms, failures to maintain critical 2 security equipment, over reliance on compensatory measures, misunderstanding of security protocols, poor communications, and weaknesses in contract and resource management.’ The contractors have been put on notice, (PDF), but they still have the contracts.
And that, folks, is national security taken seriously. Although, I guess with all those terrorist children the TSA manages to stop, they can place a little less importance on, you know, securing the shit the terrorists might actually have it in their heads to get after. Yeah, why not? Let’s run with that. Because quite honestly anything else just makes my brain wanna supernova. And I’m gonna need that for later.